Search for: [Abstract = "This text indicates, on the one hand, the sense\-making potential of architecture, and on the other hand, the necessity to be familiar with the social and political context when interpreting urban planning decisions. The subject of research is two representative yet sacred buildings constructed at the same time in the two most important cities of the Kingdom of Croatia\-Slavonia\: in Zagreb and Osijek. In the first case, the inside story of the cathedral’s reconstruction after the 1880 earthquake is examined, while in the latter, the background of architectural competition is described, together with the construction of a new parish church in the central district, consecrated in 1900. Both structures were constructed in the neo\-Gothic style, and both were to play an important role in each city’s growth, forming a distinct dominant marker in the city with the potential of centrality. The purpose of the reconstruction of the cathedral and of the creation of a new city centre at the same time was to construct a representative national space which would make it possible to express the idea of Croatian sovereignty. A new cathedral building was better suited to the opinions of the prototypical image of the central part of a European capital city. In the case of Osijek, however, the new representative buildings did not inscribe in any of national ideologies. In the light of documents and the socio\-political situation at that time, we are justified in interpreting the reconstruction of the city as a programme of the central district of the new middle class aspiring to play a dominant role. Thus,these two sacred buildings, although they both sprang from similar assumptions and architectural fashion, inscribe to different contexts, testifying to the interesting dialectic of universality and particularity."]

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